


Is This What A Date Looks Like?!?

by TheSubtextMachine



Category: Glee
Genre: 5+1 Things, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, M/M, Mention of recreational drug use, Underage Drinking, can you tell I have a soft spot for glee, listen they're in LOVE but they can't admit it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-03
Updated: 2018-11-03
Packaged: 2019-08-16 21:34:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16503116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSubtextMachine/pseuds/TheSubtextMachine
Summary: 5 times Sebastian and Kurt totally weren;t on a date, plus one where they were. Lots of denial, flirting, and referenced drama.





	Is This What A Date Looks Like?!?

1.

When Blaine takes the initiative to push his boyfriend and his new friend (who’s hated by the boyfriend, because Kurt is a magnet to complications) to hang out, it feels absurdly like a date, even though it absolutely is not one.

Because seriously: Why would Blaine book them a reservation for a two person, three course dinner at Breadstix, Lima’s premiere date night restaurant, for something that was so clearly not a date? 

Either way, Kurt and Sebastian find themselves shoved into the plasticy leather booth, chewing on the crunchy breadsticks in the most awkward possible silence. Kurt keeps tossing looks down at Sebastian’s shoulders in wonder at the sweater that Blaine quite obviously forced him to wear.

“So,” Sebastian says, brusque and uncomfortable, like he has to drum up all of his energy to push out that single syllable.

“So,” Kurt responds, defiantly, punctuating the silence with a loud crunch on the bread stick.

“Listen, Kurt, Blaine obviously wants us to hang out-”

“You think?”

“As much as it pains me to say this, and I mean _physically_ pains me, we have to find something we have in common. All the Warblers are pushing me towards this allyship with New Directions, and Blaine is the key, and you are the key to Blaine. You get that?” Sebastian rants, and Kurt has to fight the way this piques his interest. 

“I’m not going to be the key to getting you to steal my boyfriend. And Allyship? This isn’t Big Brother,” Kurt snaps, and Sebastian looks genuinely put down by this jab, like it’s some kind of reminder that he never needed.

“The thing about being human, you see, is that sometimes I do dumb things. Dumb things like hit on a taken man because I heard about what a hot number he was, physically and socially. Not that you would understand anything about being human, but-”

“You’re not even trying!” Kurt crows, throwing his hands up.

“Neither are you!” Sebastian says.

There’s a weighty silence, and Kurt gets the odd sensation that his energy, his willingness to fight, has been properly matched for the first time in his teenage lifetime. He takes a cool breath, hoping the argument hadn’t brought a flush to his face, and takes the last breadstick in the vase.

“Pay for my meal, and I’ll try. I’ll put in a good word,” Kurt says, feeling cleverness rush through his veins as if it were a drug. 

Sebastian narrows his eyes, and one side of his lips quirks up in a half-smile.

“Deal,” he says, and he puts his hand out, leading to an awkward handshake, trying to curve over the restraints of the table.

“So, how was your day?” Kurt asks, voice sweet as honey. 

“Can I have the rest of that breadstick?” Sebastian asks, pointing at the remaining half, perched in Kurt’s hand. This shocks Kurt away from closely examining the interplay of emotions on Sebastian’s face, and instead draws his focus to his neglected appetizer.

“No.”

Kurt then proceeds to shove the whole thing in his mouth, completely straight-faced as he vigorously chews on it, fighting laughter in response to Sebastian’s face, and the way it’s striking a perfect balance between horrified and recklessly amused.

2.

When Sebastian is walking into Scandals that night, Blaine and Kurt on his heels, he is 100% expecting to be the third wheel on this outing. It seems like they’d be taking turns when it comes to Scandals: last time Kurt was the sober one out, and this time, with Klaine™ better than ever, it seemed like this was destined to be Sebastian’s turn.

It takes five minutes for Sebastian to get his first hint that this will not be the case, when Kurt decides that Blaine will be the sober one this time around. Blaine accepts this with a miffed expression and a forced smile.

Sebastian, even though he technically hates Kurt and thinks he’s the absolute worst, finds himself kind of having the time of his life as they try to drink each other under the table, while Blaine just sort of watches.

Kurt starts to lose his filter a little bit, which is easily one of the funniest things Sebastian has seen in a while. Blaine drifts off to the dance floor, to idly sway to some remixed Adele, but for once, Sebastian feels the urge to stick to the bar, listening to Kurt’s rants. 

“No, you don’t under _stnd_ , Bas, she ws like a screaming bird. It was the best thing I ever saw in that godforsaken glee club.”

“Oh?” he asks, prompting the continued sound of Kurt’s drawl, smoother and looser than usual. In a weird way, it makes Sebastian’s stomach flip around a little bit. It’s a weirdly addictive feeling, so he keeps sipping and listens to Kurt in all of his fits of passions.

Time starts feeling more like gel, squishy and odd in his hand, until the only way he can measure it is by the songs as they begin and end.

Soon, he starts taking part in the conversation, leaning into Kurt’s space a bit, breathing in the deliciously cool aura he gives off, as they gossip about celebrities and people they both happen to know.

Sebastian can feel the thin sheet of sweat on his forehead by the time that Blaine interrupts them, he busts in, panting and casting looks over his shoulder to some eligible bachelor on the floor. This makes Sebastian angry for some odd reason, even though he knows for a fact that just a couple of weeks ago, he was that eligible bachelor.

“Yessir?” Kurt asks, spacing out and not noticing Blaine’s skittishness.

“Wanna dance? Because this guy, he, uh, asked me and I knew it wouldn’t feel right if-”

“I’m gooood,” Kurt says, his hand making grandiose flipping motions. Sebastian blinked, and then Blaine was gone, jiving on the dance floor to a thumping bass.

He uses the moment, where everything feels a bit warmer and more pink, to look at Kurt, to really _look_ at him. 

Kurt was… pretty. With those ice-lake blue eyes and sloping nose, and his hair a bit frayed and wild. It was charming, and charming was not a look he was used to. Sebastian is used to hot, to buff, to even dapper, like Blaine. But charming was a weird one. It makes him feel weirdly vulnerable, like Kurt has more power than he should’ve had.

This couldn’t stand, Sebastian decides, so he sloppily wracks through all of the ways he asserted power in the past, and randomly lands his finger on one.

“Wanna make out?” he asks, voice slurring and rough. He locks eyes with Kurt for a second, and can see that he’s considering it.

It takes a moment, but then Kurt shakes his head, closing his eyes in that way that makes Sebastian feel like his stomach is being squeezed by one big, malicious fist.

“Nah, I’m good,” Kurt says, and Sebastian has a moment of confusion. Not because of Blaine, or decorum, or lack of attraction? Just because of mood?

“Okay,” he says, feigning disinterest.

“Maybe some other time, I guss. Guess.”

Sebastian raises his eyebrows, and shoots a look to Blaine on the floor.

Kurt lets out a big yawn, drawing Sebastian’s attention away from the dance floor.

“Do you wunna go and dance? I’ll be fine over here, bro,” Kurt says, his voice going a bit deeper than usual.

“Bro?” Sebastian asks, fighting the urge to be charmed hat’s bubbling up in his stomach. He’d bet that his face probably looks charmed as hell, he can feel it in his uplifted cheeks and slight smile. For a moment, he prays that the bartender doesn’t see him, since Theo and him are close enough for Theo to make jokes about it every time he goes back.

“Sorry, man, I slip into jock speak somethimes. Sometimes. Gah, why did my mouth make _that_ sound?” he asks the air. Sebastian can only laugh and feel vulnerable under the weak, travelling party lights.

“Do you know why?” Sebastian asks, hungry to hear more of this.

“Does anyone know why?” Kurt asks, gazing into the gloss of his martini glass, mulling over and chewing his words as if they were some grand philosophical insight. 

Sebastian shoots another look to Blaine, on the floor. This feels like he’s breaking a rule, he just doesn’t know which rule. Blaine would probably know, he thinks, Blaine usually knows these things about Kurt and life and the system, whichever one it is.

Blaine’s attention is focused on some stranger who he’s dancing with, and he looks back at Kurt, still staring at the glass.

“Is this our first date?” Sebastian asks, thinking about how all this time has just been the two of them, rambling and living next to each other. The insight seems three dimensional and rich, richer than the rolling taste of musty beer on his tongue or the thumping bass rattling his shoulders.

“Nah, we hate each other too much for that,” Kurt says, blandly like he didn’t totally believe it.

“Yeah, you’re right,” Sebastian replies, not really believing it either.

3.

Kurt doesn’t know how he ended up skating around the Lima roller rink with Sebastian, trying to race each other around the block while cheesy eighties music plays in the background. Technically, this was meant to be a three person outing, but Blaine was late enough that Kurt and Sebastian just decided to start without him-- and thirty minutes in, they were pretty comfortable with it just being the two of them.

Comfortable may be a misleading term, however, because they keep falling over awkwardly, laughing at the way that they hadn’t skated in _years_ , but they’re still making their wild rounds.

No one is winning or losing, necessarily, they just keep falling and tripping over their own two feet. Eventually the two turn to sabotage, shocking the other into a fall or softy yanking wrists, which more often than not ends with them falling on each other.

Some announcement comes over the radio while they’re in their gangly two-person dogpile, saying in a rich baritone that this next song is “for the lovers”, and the two sort of skate around, pointedly not holding hands but still keeping pace with each other while “I Will Always Love You” by Whitney Houston blares over the speakers. They don’t talk, they don’t try to sabotage each other with nutty sincerity. Instead, they just keep skating, worried for a second that when the omnipresent voice said that it was for the lovers, he was mistakenly thinking that this song was somehow for them.

4.

It’s a stuffy Sunday morning, where Kurt wakes up with a crick in his neck, posed awkwardly on the Smythe living room couch as the sun blares through the windows, like it’s music being played too loud.

The TV is on its usual morning news rotation, talking about the fireworks of the night before. Kurt has to fight a groan when he remembers all of the absolute _shit_ that went down the night before, all beneath Fourth of July fireworks. 

Between him, Sebastian, and Blaine, there were two separate fights, one instance of drunkenness, one nervous breakdown, two makeout sessions, and a little bit of food poisoning.

Respectively, Blaine was the sick one, Kurt was the sad one, and Sebastian was the drunk one, which was the perfect storm of fighting and discovery. Kurt groans in earnest when he remembered that not only does he have to deal with hungover Sebastian, but he also has to deal with the fact that he (maybe) kissed Sebastian under the fireworks the night before.

Granted, the memory was blurry and spotty and he isn’t 100% sure, but he definitely kissed someone while sitting on that picnic blanket, and Blaine may have been throwing up by that point of the night.

The scariest thing isn’t even that mid-breakdown, Kurt (might have!) kissed his former nemesis, it’s that the idea itself of him and Sebastian “swapping spit”, as Sebastian’s sister calls it, isn’t the most unappealing thing in the world. Holy shit, when did he even know Sebastian’s sister well enough to quote her fondly? When was the last time Kurt even _saw_ Cooper, let alone had enough contact with him to pick up a saying or two?

Kurt flops back down on the couch, not wanting to face the music of all this. Because even if they didn’t kiss, he and Sebastian still sat had a picnic under the fireworks without Blaine present, and that feels like a line being crossed. It’s too date-y, too romantic. 

Kurt gets lost in that black hole of panic pretty quickly, only interrupted by a groan coming from the floor, just obscured by the coffee table.

“Morning, sunshine,” Kurt rasps, eliciting another groan from the floor.

“Not you…” Sebastian says in one long sigh, and Kurt’s head hurts too much to see his face, or the disdain that’s probably painted across it.

“Wow, tell me how you really feel.”

“It’s not- I’m just- it was a weird night,” Sebastian says, clambering to a position where his head is just visible above the coffee table. Unlike Kurt’s cynical imagination, Sebastian looks less loathing and more soft, pliable with his own fatigue. 

It’s a good look on him, thinks a traitorous part of Kurt’s brain. 

“Yeah, it really was,” Kurt says, trying to keep his replies as simple and neutral as possible. He wonders for a second if Sebastian’s memories line up with his, or if he can fill in the gaps in Kurt’s own memory. 

“Are we friends?” Kurt asks, because it’s much less complex and can of worms-y than “did we make out last night beneath the fireworks while we were both in the midst of absolute breakdowns, and did it mean anything?”.

“Yeah, I think so,” Sebastian answers, looking a bit dazed, like his mind is somewhere else.

“Sorry for crying all over you,” Kurt adds, because that memory is clear enough to count on. 

“It’s fine. Your problems are kind of dumb, but we’re friends, so I’m gonna listen, right?” he asks, and Kurt can only roll his eyes before realizing that that’ll make the headache worse.

“My problems aren’t _dumb_.”

“‘No one loves me, I’m gonna die alone’. Bullshit. There’s so much to love about you, man. Just because some beer guzzlers in Nowhere Ohio think you’re a bit too fruity for their sweaty-ass backs, doesn’t mean you aren’t the fabulous Kurt Hummel,” Sebastian rants, and Kurt feels as dazed as Sebastian looks. 

His mind has begun to play a repeating record of some song, of which the lyrics are only “What The Fuck” in increasing pitch. Sebastian is too tired to be self conscious of… whatever _that_ was, and Kurt’s not awake enough to deal with anything else.

“That was one hell of a first date, I’d say,” Sebastian slurs, and Kurt can only blink like a shocked deer.

“W-what?” Kurt asks. He rubs his eyes and stretches. His hasn’t changed out of his button up, he realizes, as the wrinkled fabric chafes against his skin.

“I mean, it wasn’t like a date... and Blaine is still, uhh, Blaine-ing it up with you, but it felt weird, y’know?” Sebastian says, in one long sigh.

“Are you still drunk, Bas?” Kurt asks, eyes squinting through the white light through the shades.

“I might still be a bit high,” Sebastian says, and he’s giggling in this childlike way that would be infectious if Kurt wasn’t so goddamned _confused_.

“High? First Date? What is going on?”

“Question one. High. I stole my older sister’s stash o’ brownies. Want some?”

“When?” Kurt asks, and he feels like his brain is boiling, everything is so weird.

“An hour ago, woke up, got one, fell asleep, and now I’m up, baby! Ready to, uh, rock and roll.”

“Okay, okay. We can unpack that one later, I guess,” Kurt says in one long groan before continuing, “the date thing still makes no sense to me, though.”

“It was a joke! It’s just, like, you and me and fireworks! You kept looking up at them with this wonder, and the lights kept shining on your face like _holy shit_. And then we had that deep conversation. And you know… hugging each other, and talking about our feelings and shit. Then staying up late, and crashing in my living room and staying up so late because we couldn’t stop talking. It felt like a date. Ya feel?”

There’s a beat of silence. 

“We didn’t kiss, right?” Kurt asks, and the question feels so gross on his tongue.

“Nah, I’d remember that.”

He says it with so much surety in his voice that Kurt’s head hurts. Kurt just wants to turn it off, all the questions and confusions and wondering what _that_ meant. He just wanted to slow time down and live in another dimension of all this.

“Are those brownies still up for grabs?” Kurt asks.

“You’re my kind of man, Kurt Hummel.”

Kurt laughs and tries to push the night before out of his mind.

 

5.

Sebastian holds the bouquet of flowers in his hands with a certain air of incredulity, standing outside the Hummel doorway like some lovestruck fool.

Which he is _not_.

He’s just a guy taking his friend out to a restaurant, since Kurt’s never been to this restaurant and Sebastian just got a fat load of cash (through some things that may be illegal, but Kurt maybe kinda sorta matters more than breaking the law). It makes sense, in his denial-drenched mind.

Burt is the one that opens the door, and Sebastian has to fight a full body cringe at Burt’s face, sizing him up from top to bottom with a merciless gaze.

“Hey Mr. Hummel, is Kurt in there?”

“Yes.”

Burt lets the silence hang in between them, and Sebastian can’t hold in the grimace that escapes him. 

“This isn’t a date, sir. Just want you to know.”

“So you’re taking him to a fancy restaurant, wearing nice clothes, and buying him flowers. In a platonic way.”

“Exactly! No one else gets it!” Sebastian says, not picking up on Burt’s latent sarcasm. He is too relieved at Burt saying exactly what Sebastian has been saying for the past week to one million different skeptics. 

“Yeah, you’re right on that one,” Burt mutters, looking down at the ground and shoving his hands in his jean pockets.

“I mean, after the whole Blaine thing, I want to cheer up my friend!” Sebastian says, so energetically that it probably sounds fake. The “Blaine Thing” wasn’t even that bad, seeing that Kurt was the one who ended it, and the grieving period was intense and short. Sebastian was even there for a solid portion of it, holding his hands and petting his (weirdly soft) hair and whispering comforting things.

“I get it,” Burt says, not getting it whatsoever.

“Dad! Is Bas here?” Kurt yells, and Sebastian can hear it through the doorway. He doesn’t even notice the soft, fond smile that shines across his face. Burt definitely notices it. 

“Yeah! Come get your man!” Burt yells back, and Sebastian doesn’t even have enough time to object before Kurt appears, looking too well groomed for his own good. Sebastian has to fight the wave of attraction that hits him, but he just pins it on being a teenager with too much imagination and close proximity to another gay guy.

Sebastian does not, will not, and cannot ruin the best friendship he’s ever had with some _feelings_.

But goddamn, if it isn’t hard with Kurt looking a bit breathless, standing by his dad’s side and keeping Sebastian wrapped around his finger like it’s nothing.

“I brought flowers,” he says, holding them up with no shame. Burt rolls his eyes, and Sebastian can’t even care about it.

“Thanks,” Kurt says, and Sebastian has to try to hold down the stupid flutters in his stomach that come from the way that Kurt blinks shyly, ducking his head before pulling it back up to meet his eyes for a searing moment.

“Have fun on your… platonic outing,” Burt says, like he can’t believe that this is his life now.

“Thanks, I will,” Kurt says, and then they’re off on their totally platonic, not at all romantic, outing.

+1.

“This is a date, right?” Sebastian asks, looking down at their hands, linked between them as they walk through the mall, window shopping as the clocks on their phones ticked ever closer to closing time.

Kurt laughs, and looks around, at the other couples ambling about the shopping center, looking just as infatuated as he feels right now.

“Depends. Buy me a scarf and you might get a good answer,” Kurt jokes, and Sebastian laughs simply, rocking their hands between them. 

“I can do that. Maybe throw in something to sweeten the pot?” Sebastian asks, and Kurt knocks his shoulder against Sebastian’s. It’s a simple, happy moment, a quiet, gorgeous culmination to the drama and baggage, 

“I can consider it…” Kurt says, and they share a look of understanding, of a shared solidarity.

They can agree, for once in their rivalry turned friendship turned romance.

Yeah, this is _totally_ a date.

**Author's Note:**

> y'all I really like glee,,,, and this pairing is so cute? So here you guys go, comment if you liked it, and check me out on tumblr dot com @thesubtextmachine, where I take prompts of all sorts! Tahnk you guys so much for reading!


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